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from the Wait-long-enough-and-sc-fi-always-becomes-sci-fact dept.
In 1951 Isaac Asimov inflicted psychohistory on the world with the Foundation Trilogy. Now, thanks to data sets going back more than 2,500 years, scientists have discovered the rules underlying the rise and fall of civilizations, after examining more than 400 such historical societies crash and burn - or in some cases avoid crashing. More here:
Turchin's approach to history, which uses software to find patterns in massive amounts of historical data, has only become possible recently, thanks to the growth in cheap computing power and the development of large historical datasets. This "big data" approach is now becoming increasingly popular in historical disciplines. Tim Kohler, an archaeologist at Washington State University, believes we are living through "the glory days" of his field, because scholars can pool their research findings with unprecedented ease and extract real knowledge from them. In the future, Turchin believes, historical theories will be tested against large databases, and the ones that do not fit – many of them long-cherished – will be discarded. Our understanding of the past will converge on something approaching an objective truth.
Discuss. Or throw rocks.
(Score: 2) by sjames on Monday November 18 2019, @05:25PM (14 children)
And, of course, if you don't go far enough you also remove that incentive or channel it into criminal activity. There exists a sweet zone.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by barbara hudson on Monday November 18 2019, @07:46PM (13 children)
People have an innate need to feel control over their lives, and work is one such way. You work, you contribute to society, you contribute to your own self-worth and economic well-being.
Why do you think retired people volunteer so much? They've got their pension, they don't get paid to volunteer. And yet they volunteer, working for free, because of the social benefits to themselves and society in general. You are working with likeminded people, there's no competition to see who makes more money, ... imagine how much more enjoyable regular work would be under those conditions. Where you do the tasks you want to do and are able to do. People pitch in to do the hard stuff, supported by the other volunteers who appreciate and acknowledge the extra effort. And you put in the time you can, when you can, because you want to, not because you have to.
Volunteer workers are an example of socialist organizations that work. Without them, capitalism would fall apart much quicker because there's no economic profit in voluntary work, and yet it provides essential services, from disaster relief to helping the poor and infirm, and others who are being harmed by the precarious, rent-seeking economy.
Want a society that doesn't have volunteers who step in for floods, fire, and other disaster relief? That leaves even more people homeless or having to choose whether to buy food or medication, but not both? Want more people sleeping in the streets, shitting in the streets, like in New Delhi and Mumbai and St. Petersburg?
SoylentNews is social media. Says so right in the slogan. Soylentnews is people, not tech.
(Score: 2) by sjames on Monday November 18 2019, @08:42PM
You're preaching to the choir! All of those countries you mentioned are at least a lot closer to the sweet spot than the Ŭ.S.
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Monday November 18 2019, @09:21PM (11 children)
Yes, it absolutely does, because it de-couples work from reward. "From each according to his ability, to each according to his need" is the famous Marxist dictum that captures its misunderstanding in a nutshell.
If you think somebody is going to randomly volunteer to go out in the middle of the night in dirty weather to repair a broken sewer main out of the goodness of his heart, then you are a fantasist.
Laissez-faire capitalism needs to have its sharp edges abraided, but socialism goes full-retard in the other direction.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 2) by dry on Monday November 18 2019, @10:49PM (2 children)
When you feel that you own part of that sewer system, you are likely to go out and fix it in the middle of the night.
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Tuesday November 19 2019, @06:00PM (1 child)
No, amigo, what you get is the same old Free Rider Problem. This has been gamed out for decades. It doesn't work.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 2) by dry on Tuesday November 19 2019, @10:25PM
I guess volunteer fire departments don't go out in the night to fight fires. It's not like they're getting paid and being part of the community is awfully close to communism, just like all the other volunteer things that get done in my community.
(Score: 2) by lentilla on Monday November 18 2019, @11:40PM (1 child)
I would repair a broken sewer in filthy weather if it really needed to be done - I just wouldn't do it on a regular basis. Socialist systems have this covered: when something needs to be done on a regular basis, an expert is tasked with doing the job. The community recognises the need for the job to be done and bands together to pay the person doing the job.
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Tuesday November 19 2019, @05:51PM
You might if it's yours. What if it's two hours' drive away in Queens, where only brutes and Philistines live? I'm guessing you'd opt to stay home in bed with your snookums 100% of the time.
You mean like happens in our lovely democracies where the KGB doesn't also show up and abduct my spouse in the middle of the night? Yeah, I think we have that covered; also, the people who get paid to fix our systems get pensions & benefits too. Yep, no need for socialism here, but thanks.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 2) by Immerman on Monday November 18 2019, @11:42PM
You are absolutely correct that "to each..." seems to remove the economic incentives to strive. There are other kinds of incentives but I won't argue that point, I have a feeling that, on the balance, you're correct, and society needs those material incentives to prosper.
But what you are imagining is communism, not socialism.
And since I suddenly saw your quote in a different light that's more interesting than what I was going to write about, let me offer a different take than yours (which may well have little to do with what Marx meant)
Take it the two partial statements as a skeleton:
From each according to their ability could be expressed as - "the system" should extract as much out of each individual as their reasonable amount of their effort can deliver
to each according to their need - nobody should ever need anything that "the system" can deliver.
Now, let me describe a system where the "To..." is true. Nobody *needs* anything - you have free access to medical care, simple robes, clean water, a 3'x7' sleeping cubicle, and all the nutritious ration-bars you can choke down. You can spend your days wandering the world in a health, comfort, and safety that our stone-age ancestors could only dream of. You need for nothing, but there's certainly a huge amount of room for improvement.
Now, myself? I think that world leaves a whole lot of room for economic incentives to secure the "From" part of the equation. Especially with automation rapidly reducing just how much "from" is really needed to deliver the "to".
Add in free education, transportation, and basic banking, so that those lacks don't hinder people from effectively working to better themselves and their position, and you've got a society in which any peasant with the potential and ambition can pursue whatever career path they wish, limited only by their own efforts and the competition. Without being chained back by the need to work 40+ hours a week just to keep themselves alive.
You also eliminate the element of coercion from employment negotiations. Without the fear of death or homelessness to motivate them, workers at the bottom of the ladder are free to pass up on any opportunity they don't deem equitable. I'm willing to bet that causes a substantial increase in the combination of money and respect paid to them for their services, with likely trickle-up effects for everybody above them on the ladder.
(Score: 3, Informative) by barbara hudson on Tuesday November 19 2019, @12:15AM (4 children)
People also still own private property, and are free to start businesses and own the means of production in Canada, so another difference between socialism and communism.
But just look at health care in the USA. Spending more per capital for worse health care outcomes, and medical bills are STILL the #1 cause of bankruptcy. Crazy.
SoylentNews is social media. Says so right in the slogan. Soylentnews is people, not tech.
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Tuesday November 19 2019, @05:46PM (3 children)
First, I know that communism isn't socialism. Socialism, per Marx, you know, the guy that invented that term?, is the stage between capitalism and communism where the state controls the means of production in order to unwind the social patterns and assumptions of the proletariat that have been oppressed and conditioned to oppression under capitalism. Communism is the utopian end state whereby the state becomes no longer necessary in the means of production because a new communist man has been created. There has never been a communist state on Earth because the whole party stops at socialism, which oppresses and murders millions of people.
Also, Canada is not a socialist country, by definition. The state does not control the means of production. Private property is the rule. What it does have is certain social programs that benefit people who can't pay for them on their own. So, you might want to check your own level of relative knowledge and ignorance, compadre.
My personal take on healthcare, since you raised it, is that we ought to regard it as infrastructure more than a luxury. We don't generally charge people to walk down the sidewalk or drive on a given road or use the sewers to dispose of excrement because the knock-on benefits of having them free to use is far greater than a narrow, per-use fee assessment can deliver. In other words, our need to rely upon each other forms many of the underpinnings of human society, and if we want to pursue an extreme capitalist ideology in a niggardly pursuit of profit maximization then we will find ourselves in a reality as vicious and murderous as a socialist society delivers.
Our best chance for freedom, prosperity, and progress lies in the interstices of tensions between all the parties that think they know exactly what's best for us.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 2) by barbara hudson on Wednesday November 20 2019, @06:28PM (1 child)
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(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Thursday November 21 2019, @12:22AM
What? Look, comrade, if you don't even understand that the material dialectic is the entire, I mean, the complete, central dynamic of Marxist theory and its government forms of socialism and communism, then you need to be sent back to the camps for re-education.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 2) by barbara hudson on Wednesday November 20 2019, @07:27PM
Sure we do. Municipal taxes. Road taxes on gas and diesel. Special levies for local improvements. Water taxes, taxes to pay for redevelopment, public transit (which also gets users to pay a portion), state and federal taxes, taxes to work (payments into unemployment and pension funds, taxes on earnings), estate taxes when you die, sin taxes, amusement taxes, access taxes on telecommunications services (talk might be cheap but it isn't free), half the economy is sustained by taxes.
SoylentNews is social media. Says so right in the slogan. Soylentnews is people, not tech.